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AL 77 - Spyder Phase
Come in, 3P0...Where could he be? The boat returned with twenty good folk who set out on the ship from the homeland to bring us updates. One such update was that we were the sole mission of the three that set out to send word back. The other two have gone dark. We suspect they are on this continent somewhere and are worried that they succumbed to the perils of this realm. We set out at the crack of dawn to the CBW to see if we could pass through the wall to another part of the land and find our missing associates. I put on the glasses only to see a different set of eyes blinking at me from the back of the cave. When I mentioned that it seemed to be a set of dots that flickered briefly before shifting to a more regular shape, Enya pointed out that the segment of the calendar had been a reptile when we went to Kamdur's lair. The next segment of the calendar ( Day 77) would be a phase change to the spider it would appear. So appear a spider eye did. I asked the eye very nicely to open the door for us. It did so and we stepped through. The change in atmosphere was discernable, instantly. Cobwebs decorated the cave ceiling above. The bridge was noticeably different, with what looked like cracks repaired by thick spider silk as though they were woven shut. Up ahead in the distance, Enya spied a dark creature crawling under the bridge Varys tried communicating with it in drowish, draconic and the combo-language we had thusfar only seen in script. It momentarily stopped what it was doing, emerged to see who was talking, lost interest and went back about its business. We bounded across the bridge, using fragments of crystal as stepping stones and made it across to another "nexus" with a light orb in the center of an archway. Beneath the nexus spanned a giant spider web with what appeared to be a cluster of worker spiders in it. I cast invisibility, grabbed the orb and ran past to the North before anyone could object, to a path shrouded in darkness that only reveal itself about ten or fifteen paces in advance, so I had to catch myself or fall into the web, or worse - hurtling down into the dark abyss. I nimbly tumbled and leapt across the chasm to the path. Visibility continued to be a radius of ten or fifteen paces. The worker spiders seemed to have taken no notice, so working together, we were able to leap past a few of the bridge fragments, continuing Northeastish. As we passed over to a slightly larger stretch, with each leap across, the edge of the bridge began to weaken, and once the last of us, Klotar, transversed, it began to crumble, rapidly. We started running but the bridge collapsed and we inevitably fell down... down... down through the mist and the darkness. Suddenly light shone as bright as day again and we landed as though we had fallen no more than 10 feet. We landed with a splash in a river that wasn't too terribly rapid in a forest of pine and deciduous trees. The fresh aroma was in stark contrast to the dusky, dusty smell of the spider caves above. We almost lost Enya to the river while I was distracted by the surroundings, but Varys had the presence of mind to dive under, grab her by the waist and struggle ashore. As soon as we reached, we turned to look in the face of large, pointy teeth in the mouths of numerous smallish fish that were continuing to snap at our absent heels. Enya noted from the position of Dunia in the sky that it was just past noondark. The river flowed SW and we were NE of our outpost from the position of Dunia. We decided to follow the river to see if it would lead to the sea. I took first row, followed by Varys who at one point encountered rocks, so he steered the craft into a safe cove until Enya, who was slotted to be next, woke up. Their decision was to wait till light so all of us could wake up and traverse the rapids. Once awake, we decided to go by land instead of facing the choppy waters, so it was noondark by the time we got past the rapids and got the craft back into the water. The area began to be bad misty. We feared for our magic. In the midst of the mist we spied little creatures with big ears.... Koala-like in appearance. As we neared dark, they began to act agitated, aggressive, almost gremlin-like and the chattering began to be more feral in nature. We tried to keep in the middle of the river but after a tete-a-tete with a rock we began to experience some turbulence. Varys was able to call out the dangerous spots. As we progressed things got progressively more dangerous. As the proverb goes, we were stuck between leaping piranhas and feral koalas. :scream: In addition to the sounds of fish jaws, koala fangs and roaring waters, we heard the faint buzzing of insects approaching. Enya shot an arrow and kebabified two mosquitoes against a tree. I thunderwave splatted a bunch in the area. In the chaos, we almost bumped into another rock but Klo steered clear in the last minute. Varys planted a sleep spell in the center and that took care of the rest of the mosquitoes. My paranoia came to fruition when we went over a waterfall, despite my frantic attempt to tie our shoelaces to reinforce the raft. Enya tried to use survival to advise the party on methods to stay alive. Varys used his powers of performance to rally us to a higher level of confidence and Klo tried something else that didn't work. In the end, we reached a cave, each of us in a wounded state. We took some goodberries and decided to take a short rest before venturing forth again... |'Starring:' }} | and Featuring: }} | Locations Visited: }} Be sure to use the Source Editor to specify values for the template to auto-tag this adventure entry! 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